RAC could expand for '09.

Team RAC boss Dick Bennetts reveals a third car is sitting just waiting to be filled.

While the dust continues to settle on the 2008 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship, focus is already turning to the future with Team RAC team boss Dick Bennetts revealing that the WSR-run outfit could expand to run three cars in 2009.

The team successfully defended both of the Independents' titles during the BTCC's 50th anniversary season with Colin Turkington and Stephen Jelley sharing driving duties in the two lurid orange BMW 320sis.

However, moving forwards, Bennetts revealed that a third car is already waiting and ready to go for 2009 if the budget can be found to run the car. It would then be down to the team to decide who would partner Turkington next season, with the Northern Irishman already signed up for another year.

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"We are locked in together for next year and will see what happens after that," he told Crash.net. "We've actually been thinking about next season for several months. As a business, you have to think ahead and have a business plan in place. We are well down the road, although we aren't all finalised yet as we are speaking to some co-sponsors to see if we can get a bigger budget to do some testing.

"We have got a third car at work so we are looking at the possibility of gearing up to run three cars. We've built up a third car during the six-week break and we could have that running in 24 hours. We may also do one more race as well this year - we are looking at different options."

Bennetts added that he was pleased with how the season as a whole had panned out for his team as Turkington again proved to be the man to beat in the Indy standings.

"It's been a very competitive year," he said. "We switched from a six-speed box to a five-speed one this year at the behest of our engineers to save 30 kilos of weight - although it cost us ?30,000! But it has been a strong year and I was saying to people that to have 14 cars qualifying in less than half a second at Brands Hatch shows how competitive it is whether you are a works team or a private team.

"We'd like to have had a win to finish the year but our target was to win the Independents' title and we got the teams' title after race two and the drivers' title after race three."